10 reasons why I avoid motivational speakers
Inspiring quotes, motivational speakers, the killer mindset
- Join 2–3 trade related organisations with official sounding names.
- Read the top 3 best selling books on your topic and summarize each on one page.
- Give a free 1–3 hour seminar at the closest well known university.
- Do the same at branches of two well-known, big companies. Use the fact that you have given seminars at the university for credibility to get the booking. And so on.
1. Band Wagon Effect
The fervour of the crowd causes them to lose their ability to think logically. The herd draws them in, and they lose their capacity for independent thought.
2. Motivation is super charged cappuccino that will lead you to an inevitable crash
The initial inspiring boost you get dissipates as weeks go back and you are back to your baseline level of motivation and happiness. In the end, nothing really changed.
3. People who sell the dream and certainty are selling false hope
Future pacing, Visions and Dream. Get the person to visualize a great new future built on flimsy evidence. But it sound's really cool.
4. Backgrounds are mytholigized
Motivation speakers may make up and exaggerate their credentials and experiences. Or they get official sound credentials from unvetted "associations" to demonstrate trustworthiness.
Tim Ferris* expounds cooking up expertise in his book, "The 4 hour work week". Which I have summarized
*I like Tim Ferris's books in general, but I found this particular tactic a bit shady
5. People trust confidence over expertise
It's easy to dupe people if the speaker appears confident and articulate vs a subject matter expert, also known as the Dr. Fox effect
6. Pseudoscience
Motivation speakers make unsubstantiated claims, cherry-picking evidence, and using false analogies.
7. Survivorship Bias
Survivorship bias can impact motivational speaking seminars by causing the presenter to focus on the successes of the people who have attended the seminar while ignoring the failures of the people who did not attend the seminar. This can lead to an unrealistic view of the seminar's effectiveness, ultimately demotivating attendees.
There is no measurement of the success level of the participants after the talk. No independent study to validate the claims that are made.
8. Lack of Quantitative Data
Most advice is poor qualitative data: unverified stories, hypothetical, word of mouth and testimonials. You see little sourcing, citations, validated stats or data analysis
9. Long winded introductions are sales tactics
There tends to be inverse relationship between the length of the introduction/teaser vs the system discussed.
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